Racist School Lunch Menu Causes Outrage: Fried Chicken and Watermelon for Black History Month
A racist school lunch was served to students Friday at a California all girls' private school in honor of Black History Month. The menu, which included fried chicken, watermelon and corn bread, outraged parents, and administrators attempted to address the issue at an assembly Wednesday.
The racist school lunch at Carondelet High School for Girls in Concord, Northern California initially began as an idea by the students to celebrate black history; some girls wanted a special menu. However, when the school's menu selection of fried chicken, collard greens, smoked turkey, rice and peas, jalapeno cornbread and watermelon was announced for students, many of them and their parents became offended.
The school principal, Nancy Libby, was forced to apologize after the backlash, and sought to quell the sentiment with a personal address.
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"I'd like to apologize for the announcement and any hurt this has caused students, parents or community members," Libby said in a letter to parents Wednesday. "Please know that at no time at Carondelet do we wish to perpetuate racial stereotypes."
The private school also intends to have a diversity assembly to discuss what happened with the students and administrators directly.
While fried chicken and watermelon isn't by itself, racist, the food has historically been used to denigrate African-Americans, stemming all the way back to 1915 in the film "Birth of a Nation," which addressed the beginning of the Ku Klux Klan.
In it, actors playing black elected officials acted crassly and undignified, with the intended message being that black people shouldn't be able to vote, according to Authentic History. One of the men in blackface was voraciously eating fried chicken.
"That image really solidified the way white people thought of black people and fried chicken," Claire Schmidt of the University of Missouri explained.
The watermelon stereotype has a similar origin, according to The Wire.
